EXTRAEXTRA

Taylor Swift Downgrades Herself

Poor Taylor Swift. The 23-year old 'country' pop singer who has been called "America's Sweetheart" and has been praised by comrades like Reese Witherspoon for being an "exemplary role model" and for not using sexuality to promote her career, has finally capitulated to Hollywood pressure. She recently paid a surgeon to lacerate and pump a kind of synthetic fluid into her breasts, so that they might appear slightly larger. And she has been showing off the results.

The fact that a successful woman today can feel dissatisfied with herself because she has the breasts of an average 23-year-old speaks to the utter barbarity of celebrity culture. It is particularly sad in Taylor's case, as she was naturally lovely.

Imagine lying in bed at night, in your multi-million dollar mansion, and thinking about how much you hate yourself because you don't look like a blow-up doll. Imagine this vividly, because the Hollywood lie that 'fame and money solve everything' is far too prevalent at present.

Her own explanation of her singularity takes the following unfortunate course: "I'm a Sagittarius, which means, you know, I'm blindly optimistic ... Sagittarians are really independent, and we like our space ... Independence is something I've always needed ... part of me just wants to be alone." If that counts in your mind as reasoning or a valid explanation of anything, your problems run much deeper than just low self-esteem.

Instead of trying to make useless superficial changes that she will regret later in life, Taylor might better spend her time trying to develop herself as a human being, or perhaps even recognizing what it means to be a human being. She has learned to see herself through the lens of her exploitative handlers and has accepted the inhuman caricature that they have assigned to her. If she really values her independence, she'll stop listening to them and start discovering who she really is. Then maybe she will be able to find romance and have a serious relationship with a fellow human being.